In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which serves as the country’s main safeguard against water pollution. It grants the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) regulatory authority over what it defines as “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS). In many ways, this law has drastically restored our waters from years of pollution and degradation. Yet, throughout its history, one thing has remained unclear: what it means for wetlands.
In general, WOTUS are understood to be navigable waters, like lakes and rivers. The term has historically been interpreted to include some wetlands insofar as they influence those navigable waters, but not in their own right.
In any case, the current standard was set by the Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA in 2023, where an Idaho couple challenged the EPA’s authority over the wetlands on their property, which they had recently filled in and were planning to build a home upon. The Court found that the EPA, in fact, did not have jurisdiction because the wetlands lacked a “continuous surface connection” with WOTUS.
Then, in November 2025, the EPA and USACE themselves jointly proposed revisions to the definition of WOTUS that follow the Supreme Court precedent. This new definition could leave 85% of wetlands without any federal protection. And while some states, like Connecticut, have their own formal wetland protections in place, “24 states [rely] entirely on federal protections via the Clean Water Act,” according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Thus, these changes will greatly influence the future of the nation’s wetlands.
Yet the real problem is that the Court ruling is not unfounded. Despite the past precedent of protecting wetlands, the Clean Water Act itself does not discuss in unambiguous terms the extent to which wetlands qualify as WOTUS, and someone could be forgiven for not inherently considering a marsh or bog as a water body.
The truth remains, however, that wetlands do deserve this federal protection, even though this fact has been eclipsed for so long by a fundamental misunderstanding of wetlands and their value. Far from in-between-lands or disease-ridden wastelands, wetlands are simply ecosystems which hold water intermittently throughout the year – which is exactly where their importance stems from.
For one thing, they act as sponges, holding excess precipitation in the event of heavy rainfall and prevents storm damage and flooding. The requirement that they have a “continuous surface connection” with another water body ignores the dynamic nature of wetlands that makes them so influential.
Their benefits don’t stop there. They also naturally filter out pollutants in runoff before it enters other waterways, including sources of drinking water. Furthermore, their conditions give way to unique soil characteristics that various plants and animals depend upon. Wetlands are among the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world, and they serve as habitats and breeding grounds for myriad wildlife, including one third of all threatened or endangered populations in the country, according to the National Park Service.
In this way, wetlands are not borderline water bodies, but rather a different class of ecosystem that nevertheless provide indispensable environmental services because of their uniquely wet conditions and have a great deal to do with water quality within the United States. By any comprehensive definition, they should qualify as “waters of the United States.” The obvious and urgent corollary is that, rather than minimizing the definition of WOTUS, the EPA and USACE must expand it to expressly include wetlands — in their own right.
The power of thriving wetlands is great. Take the Rwandan capital Kigali, for example. After losing 50% of their wetlands to pollution and degradation, the city felt the loss of its natural protection against its rainy season in newfound vulnerability to destructive flooding. But a large and unprecedented project to restore wetlands across the city has seen great improvements in flood management, to many residents’ relief. The lesson here is not that wetlands have miraculous restorative powers over nature, but rather that they are especially crucial aspects of nature to begin with, and consequently their degradation results in great disturbance of the natural systems we rely upon daily.
Thus, while it may feel like a tall task to protect wetlands when they seem like enticing places to build, the path forward requires recognizing that the allure of unimpeded construction will come up empty if we fail to respect nature’s patterns. Take the Sackett couple, for example. Building their house on a wetland, they have taken the place of a natural holding pool for precipitation, meaning their basement may very well be the new pool the next time it rains. We can’t cheat nature, and wetlands are simply the latest test.